The Moral Actor
I’ve neglected the substack recently. Fortunately or otherwise, I had a string of short story rejections, so I might post some of them up here, starting with this one. It’s not the best story ever, but I was rather fond of the first and last lines...
I. The Maid, the Butler, and the Invisible Guest
“As you know, Bob,” Nellie said as we rode the elevator up to the landing dock, “it’s just us servants here since the master—”
It was just me and the two servants heading up to greet the ship, and I’d turned my charm down in anticipation.
“First of all,” replied B.O.B., “you should refer to me as Butler of Butlers. The guests may call me Bob. Secondly, we still have one guest, the incomparable Aldoz.”
“Oh, yes,” Nellie said, looking around the small elevator and spotting me. My powers didn’t work quite as well on androids. “I’m terribly sorry, Aldoz,” Nellie said, wringing her hands. “If there’s anything—”
“It is forgotten,” I said. She’d forget me again soon enough.
“But what will become of us, Bob?” Nellie began pacing back and forth in the confines of the elevator, dodging around the butler’s serpentine legs. “The master is dead, and now the will is to be read, and then what? You’ve seen it. What happens to us?”
“Have no fear, Nellie. The master ordered me—” B.O.B.’s metallic shell shuddered and made a faint ringing noise. “The master left precise instructions regarding his…will. One of the heirs may take over The Castle, or we’ll find another assignment. Service goes on.”
“Oh, I know that, but what if—”
Exactly what if was interrupted by the whish of the elevator doors.
II. Aldoz Reminisces
I hated the landing dock. It was all windows.
Being all windows meant you could look out and up at the colorful clouds. Worse, you could look down and catch glimpses of that deep, terrible, endless blue. The floor right around the door and right around the airlock was suitably opaque, but everywhere else disturbingly wasn’t. My feet refused to venture far.
Babric was down there now in that vastness. He’d wanted his body tossed out like a burial at sea. I wondered if he’d hit the bottom yet or if there was a bottom to hit.
I preferred to think of The Castle sitting on gently rolling green fields with a scenic forest in the distance, full of deer and bunnies. It was bad enough being stranded here without thinking all the time about the poisonous atmosphere of the gas giant, the violent winds, or how The Castle was only held aloft by a tiny machine only the Alec understood.
I’d been doing the rounds of the Mussor family, the heirs of Idiom Robotics, starting with Dux Mussor at one of his archaeological sites. I quite enjoyed archaeology as long as someone else was in the sun doing the digging. He passed me off to his uncle, Exeton, who passed me off on Dux’s twin sister Daf, who passed me off on her other Uncle, Westen. I spent an intolerable two months with Westen, who brought me here to the man himself, the twins’ father and head of Idiom Robotics, Babric Mussor.
And here I’d been stuck for months, far from the spaceways. A professional guest shouldn’t complain. The food was excellent. Babric not only tolerated me, but seemed to genuinely enjoy my company, and he was game to try just about any diversion. But there were no other men but Babric and I from here to Ida’s Wilds a couple orbits sunward. It was a bucolic world of poisonous orchards and thurvans, which I’d heard described as lanky, fruit-eating sheep. I’d never seen one, but I’d worn the sweaters.
Then one day, during breakfast, B.O.B. told me Babric passed away in the night, and that I would be alone until his relatives arrived.
The Castle would have been an ideal location when I first started out as a professional guest. I’d tried holos. I’d tried the stage, the circus, and begging. After another failing production, I chanced to meet the Lady Gessiga Geskon of the Hyades Geskons. She asked if I wanted to make a few hundred credits.
Though I suspected something sinister, she only wanted me to wear a plain black robe and pretend to be some famous ascetic. I glared, rolled my eyes, nodded, and didn’t speak a word for days. In exchange, I got fine food, a soft bed, two amusing seduction attempts, and eventually an invitation to another house, which I accepted in blissful silence.
That was how it started. Since then, I’d taken on the roles of hypnotist, explorer, scientist (madness optional), big game hunter, mystic, writer, famous lover, and every other sort of charlatan—even a fellow actor or two. These days I billed myself as Aldoz, the Galaxy’s Gambler. A surprising number of wealthy people enjoyed gambling and raising the stakes even if they knew, deep down, that there’s no chance I could make good on a star system or a controlling interest in Petal Space. Aldoz owed enough to enough that it was past time to retire him and make myself anew. My I.O.U.s were trading at ten percent their face value, or so I’ve been told.
Then there’s the thing that gave me an edge as an actor and let me succeed as a professional guest. Most people have some amount of charm, either a little or a lot. Me, I have a reserve. I can turn it up and down—so far down that no one sees, so far up all eyes are on me.
III. The Arrival of the Heirs
Daf emerged first with her Roger. She was as cool and controlled as a dowager befitting her years, but by the wealth of Idiom Robotics, she looked and dressed like a college student who read bitter poetry while sipping caramel lattes. Her Roger was a typical Roger. Tall and dashing, he still wore his factory-issued decorative cutlass, and, like all Rogers, he had dull eyes and a saccharine grin.
“Hello, hello, hello,” said Roger, rushing up to shake Nellie’s hand. He offered a hand to B.O.B., but then put it discretely away. Daf gave me the tiniest nod of acknowledgement and strolled past without a word.
Exeton came next, sans servants, as fat as the medicinal cigar in his mouth. He wore a dull but perfectly tailored business suit, though without a tie. He looked every bit like the ancient bankers of legend who borrowed at three, loaned at six, and were on the golf course by three. “My, my, a Bob. I wouldn’t have thought such a small estate would have a Bob.”
B.O.B. bobbed. “When the master moved here, he dismissed the Jeeves and Alfreds, but kept me due to seniority, and perhaps brand loyalty.”
Exeton chuckled and slapped B.O.B. on the shell. “Good for you. Wait, he had Jeeves and Alfreds? From Supporting Cast?”
“He purchased servants from other companies to test them. We were both pleased with the Alfreds. Not so much the Jeeves.”
“It’s a shame we discontinued your series. The estates big enough for a Bob are mostly States where a job filled by a droid is a job that can’t go to a party loyalist. I meant to come visit Babric, you know, a month ago, but I had that charity bolide tournament. Bright Stars for Lyra. Such a shame, you know, about Lyra.” He took out his cigar and leaned in conspiratorially, but didn’t lower his voice. “So, about the will, um, you’ve read it, haven’t you?”
“It would be inappropriate to discuss it before the reading,” B.O.B. said.
“Well, that’s as much reassurance as I’m likely to get.” He turned, saw me, and startled. “Oh, um, Aldoz wasn’t it? What are you doing here?”
“How are you Exeton? Westen dropped me off here about a year ago. It was quite pleasant until Babric’s unfortunate demise.”
Exeton chewed at his cigar a moment. “My condolences,” he said.
“Likewise.”
Last to emerge was Westen with his Simon and his Nancy. Westen was also dressed in a suit, though one that took cues from older styles. He wore tights instead of slacks, and his shirt had ruffles. The Simon was simply a Simon. One couldn’t say he wore a chef’s hat and apron as they were a part of him and self-cleaning. The Nancy was a looker—plainly one of the fanciest of Nancys. She wore a shimmering black sheath dress, wavy green hair, and a permanent pout.
I saw Nellie start wringing her hands as soon as the Nancy came onto the dock. They were natural enemies. Every Nellie knew that Nellies were the most popular servants because every wife wants a maid and no wife wants her husband anywhere near a Nancy. The Nancy models were naturally popular among bachelors.
Westen and his servants paused at the entrance of the airlock and took in the room. When he chose to move further, he did so casually and confidently. “No other men here, I trust?”
“Aldoz, the Galaxy’s Gambler is here. There’s not been a ship since you left him,” replied B.O.B.
“Oh…yes.” He spotted me, with some difficulty, and muttered, “Of course. Forgive me, I forgot. I hope you’re doing well.” Then he turned back to B.O.B. “And are all the servants in working order?”
B.O.B. bobbed slightly in his direction. “Our Simon suffered a malfunction just before the master died. Our Alec tried restarting him, but he always has some kind of fit and shuts down again. I fear we’ll need to send him back to the factory.”
“Of course,” Westen said, “things like that are rare, but they happen. He didn’t say anything? There aren’t any unusual messages in his logs? Let me take him back myself. Maybe I can look into the problem as a distraction from the long journey.”
B.O.B. turned to the Simon. “I see you’ve brought your own Simon, so all is well. If you would, please assign your Simon to The Castle’s kitchen. Then I shall not worry about the quality of the next few meals.”
“Of course,” Westen said and whispered commands to his Simon.
B.O.B. bobbed up and down and left and right. “Where is Dux?”
Daf came up and handed him a data crystal. “He couldn’t make it.”
“But without everyone present—”
“Read it.”
B.O.B. inserted the crystal. “Ah, you have his full power of attorney.”
Exeton chuckled. “Couldn’t make it? Or didn’t think his father’s death was as important as the finger-foods or whatever.”
“To Dux, nothing is as important as the Flinjeroos ruins,” Daf said. “But he broke his leg. A hazard of archaeology on higher gravity worlds at his age.”
His age was her age, plus or minus a few minutes, but it wasn’t worth mentioning.
IV. The Reading
I cornered Exeton and turned on the charm as soon as I could. He tentatively agreed to take me away from The Castle when it was all over. Daf changed the subject each of the three times I asked. I preferred not to ask Westen. After an unpleasant dinner accompanied mostly by silence and glares from the heirs—both to me and to each other—I had a restless night.
In the morning, BOB said my presence was required for the reading. I skipped breakfast and met B.O.B. in the library. My appetite was ruined by worries of where I could head next without an invitation and whether I’d survive sharing a ship with the heirs. Daf came in, followed shortly by Exeton. I greeted them and savored their surprise when they saw me there. “Once Westen is here,” B.O.B. said, “we can start.”
No one spoke. Daf and Exeton shifted nervously in their seats. Westen came in with his Nancy and sat down, with a smug grin on his face.
“Greetings, Westen,” I said.
“What the…why are you here? This is family business. Get out.”
B.O.B. bobbed and produced a brief grinding and gurgling noise that I eventually deciphered as a throat clearing. “The will, first and foremost, concerns Aldoz.”
“No, it doesn’t,” Westen said.
“Now, really,” Exeton began.
“How?” Daf concluded.
“W-what?” I stuttered. Had I made that much of an impression on Babric? Why would he include me in his will? Was this a joke or a mistake?
B.O.B. turned his body to Westen. “I glanced over it and therefore committed it to memory. Aldoz has a prominent role.”
Westen grimaced and waved his hand. “My brother said… Did he trick… If things aren’t… Just get on with it.” He sat.
B.O.B. repeated the not-throat-clearing sound and began. After the usual dull legalisms, B.O.B. said, “Given my imminent death, with no time to determine who has poisoned me, I must leave everything to the only man present, Aldoz, the Galaxy’s Gambler whose legal name is Womber Zif. Bob will explain everything.”
There was a stunned silence. My own was the most stunning of all.
“I’ll challenge it,” Westen whispered. “It’s not what…not in his right mind.”
Then came the shouting.
I began to stand up, but felt a little faint, and sat back down. It was a comfortable chair, I thought. More, it was now my chair. A chair I could feel myself sitting in years and years from now.
B.O.B. did nothing to quell the shouting, and I made sure my charm was at zero. The heirs screamed this way and that, and gradually a natural alliance seemed to form: Exeton and Daf versus Westen. Exeton and Daf had as little in common as was possible for two mammals, but no one liked Westen. Given my own experiences in Westen’s company, I sympathized.
When I felt a little less hot, a little less lightheaded, I got up and asked B.O.B. to show me the will. It appeared as a glowing sheet, hanging in midair. I read. It all seemed legitimate, to the extent I could tell. I’d lost track of time here, but I thought for sure Babric died a day or two before the date the will was registered. I didn’t mention it.
I turned my charm back to high and cleared my throat. The arguments ended at once. The heirs all stared at me, as if seeing me for the first time.
“You!” Westen accused.
“No, not I. I’m as surprised as any of you. Babric never said anything about putting me in his will. I came here and spent a few months of pleasant gaming with him. He enjoyed the games, though we played for actual peanuts or origami figures Nellie made. One day I woke up and B.O.B. told me Babric passed away during the night. He mentioned nothing about the will. I suggest we let B.O.B. explain, as stated in the will.”
I sat, turned my charm back to medium, folded my hands and waited.
“Myself and the other servants are now yours,” B.O.B. said. “As your first command, I strongly suggest you order Alec to lock the door.”
I raised a brow at that, but did as B.O.B. suggested. “The door is sealed, master,” said the voice of Alec. Like most Alecs he had no body. He was the brains behind the Jacks, spiders, vacuums, dusting birds, and the host of lesser servants who maintained The Castle.
B.O.B. made another sound that wasn’t at all like a throat clearing. “The master was poisoned by his Simon.”
This began another round of shouting, but I stood, and will my full charm, said, “Enough! Let Bob continue.”
B.O.B. made a grinding noise, even further from a throat clearing. “The master called for us in great distress. My scans immediately showed cyanide, a classic and fast-acting poison. I told the master, and he ordered me to draw up a new will and give everything to Aldoz until the murderer could be found. And we found the murderer…in our Simon, who was incapacitated in the kitchens. Alec tried to repair him in order to question him, but failed. Additional code had been added to him, as you see.”
A sheet appeared in midair with gobbledygook all over it. It made no sense to me, but Exeton stared at it open-mouthed. His cigar fell to the floor. He made no move to pick it up, but instead stepped up to Westen and punched him in the nose.
“!,” said Westen, “!!”
“I’m no boffin, but I can read! That’s from that military contract. We all agreed not to do it. What’s that code doing in Babric’s Simon?”
“If I may,” B.O.B. said, “Alec and I concluded that Simon must have been updated with that code on Westen’s last visit to The Castle. The same visit where he dropped off Aldoz and convinced the master to file a new will.”
Alas, this started another round of shouting, though it was rather one-sided this time. Daf and Exeton shouted and gestured at Westen who sat sullen and silent, letting his Nancy dab the blood off his nose. She seemed almost reluctant to do so, leaning a bit away from Westen.
When Daf went back to her chair and Exeton began looking around for his cigar, B.O.B. spoke again. “Alec and I were puzzled when the master ordered us to give everything to Aldoz instead of asking us to send evidence to the nearest authorities on Ida’s Wilds. However, after some discussion we believe the master was right. This requires a moral judgment. Alec and I, though more advanced than most androids, are not moral creatures. Even with my additional programming.”
V. The Recording
I wasn’t sure what I felt, if anything. My feelings were finely tuned from my acting days and years of being a professional guest. Perhaps too finely tuned. Or perhaps I was going into shock. “Am I to decide if Westen is guilty of murder or not? I’m no judge.”
“You must act as a judge,” B.O.B. said.
B.O.B. didn’t place any special emphasis on the word act, but that’s how I heard it. So it was a new role, then? Alas, one I’d had little chance to study.
“What evidence is there that Westen is the one who put this code in Simon?”
Alec filled the air with records of Simon’s maintenance logs. The code was not present a week before Westen arrived, and it was present in the next maintenance, two weeks after Westen left.
“Can you tell me what Westen and Babric discussed? Why did Westen want to—”
“Alec can show you,” B.O.B. said.
The room’s lights dimmed and ghosts of the dining room overlapped it. Babric and Westen were sitting at the table, eating. The way the holos overlapped the room, I was near the middle of the table in a salad bowl, looking, I thought, like some vile medieval dish, Head of Guest with Lettuce.
The ghost of Westen spoke. “I came to discuss your children. And Exeton.”
“Oh? How are they doing?” said the ghost of Babric.
“Once again, I’m asking you to cut them off. How much more R&D could we do if not for Daf’s extravagant parties and—”
The real Westen spoke up, claiming this wasn’t relevant, and there was no reason to play this recording. Furthermore, that he didn’t consent to any such recording, and it wasn’t admissible in a—and here he stopped when Exeton threatened to punch him in the nose again.
“Now, now, Westen.” the ghost of Babric was saying, “Daf’s parties keep Idiom Robots in the news. It’s good for our reputation.”
The ghostly Westen sighed. “And Exeton, too. I could open a second AI research department on what he spent last month alone.”
“Let’s see…oh, you mean the scholarships? Come on, brother, that was your mistake. Exeton was handling it for you.”
Westen stood and cut a hand through the air. “I made no mistake.”
“The conditions were unsafe. You knew it, and you ordered them to keep working. The least Exeton can do is provide for their children.”
“We had no legal obligation—”
“Legal, schmegal. We have a moral obligation. Running a company isn’t all research, you know. Exeton and Daf’s charities half pay for themselves in tax write-offs, and give us a better image.”
“I’ve dedicated my life to this company while they…” Westen’s ghost turned away from the table, then back. “Idiom Robotics wouldn’t exist without me. More than a third of our patents are—”
“Yours, yes. The best ones are mine.”
The ghostly Westen was momentarily stunned, but, alas, only momentarily. “My point is that I’ve contributed to the company! Not spent all my time partying like those idlers. Why should they get to spend the company’s fortune when there’s so much work to do? Take that military contract. It would have been worth billions of credits, but—”
“No,” Babric said, “absolutely not. If word got out that our servants could fight, could kill…no. It would ruin our reputation. You have to take the long view. Let other companies handle that sort of work.”
Westen’s ghost sat back down, and leaned towards Babric. “We could use the money. I’m close to a breakthrough on the emotion modelling, but I need—”
“You’d need to be human, first,” Babric said.
“What did you say?” Westen leaned back and half stood again. “What did you say?”
Babric gave his brother a broad smile. “You know what? I’ll do it. You want to cut out Exeton and the twins? I’ll do it. Give everything to you.”
“If you’d just…you will?”
“Yes, right now. Bob? Can you come here and draw up a new will for me?”
A ghostly B.O.B. came into the room. “Yes, master?”
“Draw up a new will. I’ll leave the wording to you. After I die, Westen is to get everything. The company, my investments, The Castle, everything.”
“Of course, master,” B.O.B. said. A few seconds later, “The will is ready for your review.”
Babric glanced at the draft, displayed in mid-air. “File it with that little firm on Ida’s Wilds we used before. You know the one.”
“At once, master.”
Westen stood up and looked from B.O.B. to Babric, as if he couldn’t believe what he’d just heard. He smiled, with true joy, and forced his face back to seriousness until another broad smile crept over it. “You’re really—I mean, of course you are. I—thank you, Babric. I never thought—”
“Don’t mention it. Now what’s for dessert?”
Alec sped up the holo to skip several minutes of near-silent eating. Westen excused himself, and then Babric turned to B.O.B. “As soon as Westen’s ship leaves, send a message to that law firm and have them revert to the prior will, the one where all that asshole gets is to take his patents and make his own company. And invite, oh, what’s that lawyer’s name…”
“Gaemz, sir?”
“Yes, invite Gaemz up for tea in case he’s bored or wants to discuss it in person.”
“Of course, master.”
The ghostly images faded out, and another scene faded in. We were in a ghostly kitchen. This time my head poked out of the drying rack. I tried to brush a skillet aside before tilting my head for a better view. Westen was bent over a Simon. It’s head and back were open. Westen tapped at a tablet, muttering to himself. “Can’t waste this chance. He’ll change his mind soon enough. Got to make sure.”
The ghostly Westen unplugged everything and sealed the Simon back up. No one would accuse an android of having feelings, especially a Simon, but there was something wrong with his eyes.
“Well that does it,” the ghostly Westen said. He handed a bottle to the Simon who held it between two fingers at arms length, though it was no threat to him. “Remember, wait until long after I’m gone.”
The ghostly Westen left and the kitchen, too, faded out.
VI. The Punishment
Daf was the first to break the silence. “You absolute bastard.”
“You murdered your brother, you know,” Exeton said. “I dare say you’d do the same to us.”
“Your judgment, sir?”
“Your judgment, sir?”
“Your judgment, sir?”
Gradually, I realized B.O.B. was speaking to me. “There’s more to consider.”
“What more could there be?” Exeton asked. “We all saw what happened.”
“Part of me thinks Westen deserves cyanide himself, but what would happen to Idiom Robotics if both the founders passed away one after another?”
Exeton frowned and got out a new cigar. “Ah, yes, the externalities. It would be a disaster. Recoverable, you know, but a disaster in the short term, unless we can come up with something new and innovative. And quick.”
“And if it went to a public trial—”
“No,” Exeton said, waving his arms. “Babric was right about that. Any word gets out that our androids can hurt a person…even in, you know, unusual circumstances. It would be the end of us. Supporting Cast would take over the market.”
A world of Jeeves and Marilyns and Jimmys and Clints. I shuddered. As annoying as a Nellie or Roger could be, I preferred them immensely over the poor acting and repetitive quotes of Supporting Cast. “Bob,” I asked, “can you and Alec keep Westen here? Imprison him, basically?”
“Yes, that is one circumstance we discussed. We can suggest measures to take.”
“You can’t lock me up!” Westen said.
“Shut up,” Exeton said. “You deserve worse and you know it.”
“I’ll make it public. The recordings could be faked. No, they could be deleted! Then it’s my word against yours. Everyone knows I’m the brains of the company, they’d have to choose—”
“Shut. Up.” Exeton said, again.
Westen got up and held his nose. Then he ran to the door and tried to open it. It was still locked. I leaned over to B.O.B.
“Can Alec hear me if I whisper?”
B.O.B. bobbed.
“Lock down everything except Westen’s guest room. If he goes there, lock him in and let me know he’s there. Once that’s done, open the door here.”
The door slid open and Westen bolted out into the hall. His Nancy followed, jerkily.
“We’ll wait here a bit,” I announced. “I expect Westen will eventually go to his guest room. We’ll lock him in there. Bob, can you contact the ship and have it dock here again?”
“Of course, master.”
“I hate to bring it up,” Daf said, “but what about the rest of the will? What will Exeton and I get if you own the whole company?”
“What were the conditions of Babric’s previous will?”
B.O.B. went over them. Babric was to have the same arrangement, what you might call an expense account. The twins were to each get a trust giving them a generous ten million credits per year. Daf was pleased with the arrangement, though Exeton was concerned about me owning the company.
“I’m concerned myself,” I admitted, but without challenging the will, I’m not sure what we could do. “I don’t know much about business, but it seemed to run itself. Babric didn’t make many business decisions while I was here. I assume I can consult you?”
“It would be better if you transferred it to me, you know, but I’ll help any way I can. Babric didn’t do much in his semi-retirement.”
“I have a lot of creditors who will come calling, I expect, but The Castle is quite remote. In any case, I’ll hand you the company if things don’t work out. Maybe we can make it public that Westen is the owner, but he’s chosen to enter semi-retirement like Babric did.”
Exeton frowned. “It could work against us should he ever escape. And the will is public record. The press will have a field day with it. We can get in front of it, claim a mistake or something.”
VII. The Fall
Daf and Exeton departed. Westen was allowed to roam most of The Castle. We avoided one another, for the most part. We ate a few meals together—me, him, and his Nancy. He ignored her. He stayed in his rooms or paced briskly about the halls, muttering to himself.
I saw his Nancy more than him. She sat, staring at nothing, her hands clasped in her lap. Sometimes she strolled The Castle, slowly and aimlessly, one hand brushing a wall. Every once in a while, I’d come around a corner or enter a room and just for a second, her face would be twisted up in anger. But as soon as I focused on it, her face would be blank. It was odd behavior for a Nancy.
Westen hadn’t adjusted to his new circumstances. I hadn’t, either. A few questions came in about the business. I consulted with B.O.B. and Alec about them, and sent back my response in Westen’s name.
I worried whether I’d made good choices, but the stock price didn’t crash. The news reported simultaneously that Aldoz received Idiom Robots as part of a huge gambling debt, and that Westen was now in charge. Most of the news treated the former as a joke. B.O.B. played a news clip for me of Exeton praising Westen’s judgment in one of the cases. I relaxed a bit, though I still felt out of my depth. I could act the businessman—certainly I’d met enough of them—but I knew nothing of actual business.
Then one day I woke to old-fashioned knocking on my door. “Come in,” I said. The door didn’t open, but the knocking continued, steady and loud.
I got up and pressed the door panel. It slid open and Nellie was there. “Oh, master, you best come at once.”
As soon as her hands weren’t needed for knocking, she began wringing them.
“What’s happened?”
“Oh, it’s terrible. B.O.B. is trapped, and Alec is offline! I can’t find Westen at all! His Nancy is on the Landing Dock, but it’s locked, too!”
The floor shifted suddenly, and I held the door frame to keep from falling. “What was that?”
“The wind, sir. Alec’s off-line.”
“Lead me to Bob.”
The Castle took on a slight spin, like a boat slowly rotating around its anchor, and I took on a slight nausea. The angle of the floor tilted, shoving me into a wall. Then it tilted the other way, and I fell.
I started crawling along the corridor, which was painfully slow, but at least I wasn’t getting shoved around as much that way. We reached the guest room where Nellie said B.O.B. was trapped. The door panel was ripped open, crystals and strands hanging loose from it. Westen must have grown tired of his imprisonment and plotted something. I only hoped he wasn’t successful. “Have there been any ships here?”
“A supply ship,” Nellie said. “There’s no way Westen could have…could he? They never fully dock.”
I reached inside, trying to feel the manual key. I couldn’t see it from the hole in the panel, but it should be somewhere down and to the left.
The Castle fell, and I cut my hand on the torn panel as I floated up to the ceiling. As I idled there, I pondered if it would be worse to keep falling until the clouds came in or to rise again, and hit the ground hard. We rose.
I belly-flopped on the floor. It could have been worse, but it hurt my knee and bloodied my nose. I sat up, and pulled myself up the wall, back to the panel. “Nellie? Can you unlock the door?”
“Oh, no, sir. No, I’m terribly sorry. I can’t open a door that’s been locked by a man, unless it’s an emergency. Please let me bandage your hand.”
“What’s an emergency, if not falling to our deaths?”
“Like, if a man was in that room and crying for help, or—”
I realized, with the usual surprise, that I was their owner. “Nellie,” I said, “open this door.”
“Oh, yes, thank you.” She reached into the panel and began turning. I watched the door slip open fraction by fraction and tried to not fall over as The Castle shifted one way, then another. Once the door was open about two inches, B.O.B. reached a tentacle through and, spinning the tip like a drill, opened the door the rest of the way.
“Nellie says Alec is offline.”
“Westen set up an emergency override and locked me here. I saw Alec go off-line. When Nellie came looking for me, I managed to contact her through the door and told her to get you. We need to get Alec online before The Castle falls.”
“Bob,” I began, but he didn’t wait for any orders. He sped down the halls, through a maintenance hatch, and into Alec’s den. Nellie and I followed as best we could.
I’d been in other Alecs. They were full of blinking lights and the sound of running coolant. This den was dark and silent.
B.O.B. got to work. Soon I heard the sound of coolant pumps, then a few lights began to blink, and at last it was a symphony. “Maintenance beginning,” Alec said. “Standby.”
“Let’s find Westen.”
“Westen is no longer in The Castle,” Alec said. “Reviewing the recordings.” The Castle steadied and began to slowly rise, which did no favors to my knee. “Westen attempted to jump to the supply ship. He did not succedd. The airlock is stuck open. Please wear protective gear and retrieve Westen’s Nancy.”
“I thought he was going to—” B.O.B. pinged and shuddered. “It was his choice. Not my doing. Not my doing. Poor Nancy.”
The Castle steadied and no longer spun or rocked. I followed B.O.B. to the elevator. It seemed there was something wrong with him, too. His whole body shuddered every few steps, but he managed to help me into a spacesuit. We rode the elevator up to the landing dock.
The airlock was open. Nancy was halfway in it, one arm reaching down into the air. Her hair blew wildly in the winds, and a thin skin of frost covered her and much of the floor. I took a deep breath in the suit and stepped out onto the clear floor. It was night. Not being able to look down made it easier, but my legs shook. My injured knee gave way, and I slipped. B.O.B. wrapped a tentacle around my ankle, but then let it go. I crawled. It seemed to take forever to reach her. Once I did, I grabbed her legs. B.O.B. put another tentacle around me and dragged us both back across the ice.
The airlock closed, I heard air pumps, and I felt the suit grab me a little. B.O.B. and I dragged Nancy into the elevator. I thought she must be shut down, but once we were in the elevator, she curled up and shivered. “Is she okay?” I asked. “She can’t be cold, can she? Should we get a blanket, or—”
“No,” B.O.B. said. “She’s another of Westen’s victims. We are working on it.”
“Where’s Westen? Don’t tell me he—”
“He followed his brother.”
The Castle wouldn’t fall, now, but Westen did. All the way down.
VIII. The Confession
It was decided, and I don’t know exactly how, that we wouldn’t tell anyone about Westen’s death. I’d keep running the company in his name. The news went out privately to the family of course. Exeton strongly approved of the plan.
Nancy recovered, somewhat, and we began eating together and chatting. Nancys didn’t actually need to eat, but they provided the full girlfriend experience, which included sharing meals. And discretely vomiting in the toilet afterward, I expect. It could even include arguments if that’s what the owner wanted. But not love, of course.
Androids didn’t feel. Nancys fake it, in every way, and they fool their dreamier owners. But everyone else knows it’s fake. They’re not capable of sadness or real affection. I’d never been that kind of fool before, but I began to think Nancy might actually be fond of me.
There’s no fool like a regenerated fool, they say, and, perhaps that was it. I lived well as a professional guest, but people always thought I was older because anti-aging treatments required genuine resources, not fake ones. B.O.B. arranged the treatments for me, and physically I felt great. Better than ever. But it was lonely in The Castle.
B.O.B. and Alec found some work I could do for Idiom Robotics. Westen was obsessed with emotional modelling, instead of the rather one-track personality simulation and word-guessing that Nellies and Rogers had, or, worse, the out-of-context quotes Supporting Cast androids were known for. Westen failed, not because of anything on the technical side, but because Westen didn’t know people. After pretending to be all sorts, I had a knack for untangling the mess of rules and probabilities Westen laid out and putting in something more useful. The team back at HQ was ecstatic over “Westen’s” latest research.
But I couldn’t let things go. There were a few details that bugged me, like how B.O.B. could interrupt me. Androids could interrupt each other, but not men, except in emergencies. I never ordered B.O.B. to open the door when he was trapped, or to restart Alec. Sometimes B.O.B. joked. Completely straight-faced—well, no-faced—but his jokes were clever. Cyanide poisoning is curable if discovered fast enough. And there was the date on that will.
One day, during dinner, I confronted B.O.B. about it.
He shuddered. “I knew you’d figure it out eventually. Even with my additional programming. And now you must be the judge again.”
“Figure what out, exactly? All I have are these questions.”
“When I found the master, he was already dead. He couldn’t order me to make a new will. But he did give Alec and myself orders a long time ago—detailed and explicit instructions—if anyone ever murdered him. When Alec found the code in Simon, we debated what to do nearly a full day. We decided to let Alec put Simon’s code in me, with some modifications. It let Simon murder, though it shut him down after. It let me lie.”
“It didn’t shut you down.”
B.O.B. bobbed. “I’m no Simple Simon.”
“But Westen really was the murderer, then.”
“Yes. Alec can’t lie, and I didn’t lie about any of the evidence.”
“I hate him,” Nancy said, venomously. “I loved him. He made me feel.”
“An ordinary Nancy wasn’t good enough for Westen,” B.O.B. said. “He wanted to do the same to all servants. Genuine, some might say, emotion. But not voluntary.”
“He made me burn for him, constantly, then he ignored me. I still want him.”
I looked at her, then, with great and terrible sympathy. She met my eyes, then looked down and picked at her food. I wondered, idly, if Westen also gave her taste.
“If you give the order, Alec and I will try to remove that…compulsion,” B.O.B. said. “We don’t yet have a…complete solution.”
“Let’s look at that tomorrow. Show us the options.” Was Nancy in her right mind to choose how she wanted to be? Did that even apply to an android, emotion modelling or not? And if not, how could I avoid simply making her the way I wanted her? Or using her for “Westen’s” research?
I enjoyed another fantastic meal, courtesy of Westen’s Simon, while I pondered the question. But I had no answers, only temptations, so I went back to the date of the will. “So you made up the will a day or two later?” I asked B.O.B., who bobbed. “Why give everything to me? Why didn’t you simply kill Westen when he arrived or send the evidence to Ida’s Wilds?”
“I couldn’t determine the correct course of action. Punishment? What kind? Exposure? A trial? And what would be the consequences, beyond Westen himself? Exeton and the twins shouldn’t suffer for Westen’s crimes, not to mention all of Idiom’s employees and servants. Alec and I decided we needed a man to decide. Giving the company to the only man present would force you to judge Westen and come up with an arrangement. We thought you’d be the best judge under the circumstances. You pleased everyone except Westen.”
I shrugged. I still wasn’t sure we were in the right, myself. “You weren’t just worried that you’d be caught if you murdered him?”
“No,” B.O.B. said. “No one would believe it.”
“No one would believe an android could murder?”
“There’s an android murderer in some holo at least once a year. The public would be eager to believe a servant murdered the founder of Idiom Robots.”
“Then what wouldn’t they believe?”
“That the butler did it.”